“People knew,” I say, knowing even as the words come out that it must be the truth. How could it not be the truth? There had to be cracks in the movement. Nothing involving humanity is perfect, or seamless. “Why didn’t they do anything about it before?”
“Some did,” he says. “Spreading the word in places where they couldn’t be traced—word of mouth, mainly, whispers. But not enough, and many were killed over it. It quickly became clear that our best strategy would be to let Zero happen and work instead as a secret force in their midst. Better a few lives lost and many saved in the future.”
“A few?!” Tears spring up in my eyes, but I’m less sad than angry. Surely I must have heard him wrong.
“Yes, in comparison to how many we could—”
“Were you there when they burst through the doors? Did you see their faces—their guns, their masks?” I can’t stop. Maybe I should, but I can’t. “No. No, you didn’t, because you knew about it. And you don’t have to live with the horror of those memories seared into your brain, of seeing the person you love crumple to the ground, seeing his life just, just evaporate through the hole they shot in him.” I breathe deep gulps of air, close my eyes so I don’t have to look at Lonan. But when I close my eyes all I see is Birch. Dying Birch.
I’m shaking, shaking so hard, and to his credit Lonan doesn’t say a word. He gives me enough space, enough silence. Enough to remember. And when he wraps his arms around me, I’m surprised to find I don’t have much desire to push him off. No one’s held me like this in two years. He’s strong, steady enough to hold my broken pieces together even though I am on the verge of completely falling apart. Gentle, even.
“No, I didn’t see what happened at Zero,” he says, his voice low and cracking and intense. “I was at home, in my kitchen, scrubbing my parents’ blood out of the grout in our tiles, because I didn’t know what else to do. And you’re wrong,” he says. “I do have to live with the horror of that memory. When I close my eyes, all I see are the bloody wolves’ faces carved into their arms, their palms, the soles of their feet.”
Now I’m the one who’s speechless. Speechless and still, eyes dry and staring out into our picture perfect top-of-the-world meadow.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. His arms haven’t let up at all around me, and I haven’t tried to move from them. Perhaps he isn’t so much trying to keep me together as he is trying to keep himself from falling apart.
“They were the founding members of the Resistance,” he finally says. “And I would have been with them—there to save them, or to die with them—if they hadn’t insisted I spend the night camping in the woods behind Phoenix’s house.”
We sit there for what feels like forever. It seems almost wrong to change the subject after both of us let our hearts spill out like that. When the air around us has lost its heavy emotional charge, I ask, “What does all of this have to do with what happened with Cass and Finnley?”
His chest expands, and I move with it. “The Wolves found out the Resistance is still thriving,” he says. “And they’ve found a way to infiltrate.”
FORTY
INFILTRATE.
I’m clear on the meaning of the word—just not exactly clear on what it means in this context. “So they’re, like, planting their own people to spy on the Resistance?” Spying doesn’t seem like a strong enough word for the way Finnley and Cass attacked us in the cave. “Or what?”
“Yes, essentially—but they’re not using their own people as the spies.”
Of course that makes sense, given what I’ve seen. Finnley, Cass: they’re using people who wouldn’t necessarily be suspected.
“We’ve kept the Wolves from locating the island we use as Resistance headquarters,” he continues, “but they know we’ve got contacts spread out all over the place, in all the mainland sectors. They hide the compromised among us and use them to tear us down, one by one.”
This world is an even more tangled mess of weeds and flowers than I ever imagined.
“That’s what those holograms mean, then—that they’ve been compromised?” I ask. “And the Wolfpack put the holograms on, not the Resistance?” We sit farther apart, now that we’re all business again and both trying to distance ourselves from the things we see when we close our eyes.
He nods. “That’s why I couldn’t be sure I could trust you,” he says. “Not until I knew you didn’t have the mark.”
“But you trust Cass,” I say. “And Finnley, too, even though you just met her.”
“Wrong,” he says. “I keep Finnley close to keep an eye on her.” He tears off the tiniest crumble of cheese, pops it in his mouth. “But I’ve been working with Cass for a while now, so I trust him well enough, when I’m sure it’s actually him in there.”
I have questions, so many questions. “Alexa said Cass was one of her prisoners, and they were planning to escape together before he was mysteriously relocated—but you said you’ve been working with him. How?” Before he can answer, I cram in another question: “And how did Finnley get on your ship?” And another: “Phoenix said you guys are called ‘Deliverers’—is that some Resistance thing? What’s that all about?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” he says. “We get people out and deliver them to a place, our island base, where they’ll be safe. And yes, it’s the core mission of the Resistance, though we’ve had to shift focus since the war began. Pulling out those who’ve been compromised has had to take priority over pulling out innocents.”
Sanctuary, or at least something like it—it exists!
But it looks like we aren’t on it. What is this island, then? My first thought is that maybe we’ve all landed on a decoy island, but no, it can’t be that. The guys are too intent on being here, too on-a-mission.
My head hurts.
“As for Cass, he was one of our undercover mainland contacts—he knew a guy who knew Phoenix. A number of those mainland contacts have been disappearing, then resurfacing in entirely different sectors,” he continues. “Changed.” He picks off another cheese crumble, eats it. “Some are changed more than others; some are just a shade off from normal. There’s a theory going around that the Wolves are planting something in their brains that allows them to spy on us through them, control them. From what we can tell, the theory’s spot on.”
This is all so much to take in. I assumed they’d convinced Finnley and Cass to agree to spy, somehow. But this, this is worse. This is wrong. “So . . . wow,” I say, still processing. “They force them—they make them into human security cameras, almost?”
“If security cameras came programmed with instincts to take down their enemies, yes.” He sighs. “You can see what a problem this has the potential to become. We’ve been intercepting their ships for months now, and we’ve been marginally successful at preventing people from being replanted in the sectors.”
“And you think that’s what happened to Cass and Finnley?”